A Loving Ode to Moonstruck, the Greatest Romantic Comedy of All Time

By Madeline Ward

When you think of 80’s and 90’s classic romantic comedy, what comes to mind? Certainly When Harry Met Sally, the Rob Reiner masterpiece often hailed as the greatest romantic comedy ever made. Perhaps Pretty Woman, a thoroughly problematic number featuring the considerable talents of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. But have you ever considered Moonstruck?

Moonstruck is a portrait of love in all its forms and stages. Loretta Castorini (Cher) is a woman about to enter into a second marriage with a man she does not love. When he travels to Sicily to visit his dying mother, Loretta is charged with contacting his estranged brother and convincing him to attend the wedding.

When she finds his brother: a well-oiled and tremendously passionate baker named Ronny (Nicolas Cage), they begin an affair. Loretta, who has previously been hyper concerned with propriety, lest her second marriage be afflicted by the bad luck that affected the first, is transformed.

Loretta and Ronny is the central story of a plot that masterfully intertwines several. Loretta’s father cheats on her mother with the delightfully tacky Mona, Loretta’s mother enjoys a chaste evening with an aging professor that is yet to see the pitfalls of dating his own students, Loretta’s uncle and aunt are as in love with eachother as ever. Loretta’s grandfather, an aging italian nonno, watches on. All are brought together at the kitchen table at the end of the film. Each incarnation of love in Moonstruck: new, enduring, and familial, is treated with equal humour.

Every moment of Moonstruck is teeming with passion. It’s in some parts ridiculous, but that’s all part of the film’s charm. The opera-and-Loretta obsessed Ronny barely has a moment to breathe in between adoring gazes and proclamations of love and rage. The score (Puccini and Dean Martin, included in equal importance) sweeps you off your feet. The swell of La Boheme as a young (and very handsome) Cage carries Cher’s Loretta “to the bed” is among the most perfect uses of soundtrack in film history. It’d all be a little too much, were it not for an endlessly quotable script that allows the audience time to recover from all that passion with a hearty laugh and a cold glass of water.

“Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his bride!” exclaims Ronny, after explaining the (absurd) brotherly “bad blood” between the two. It’s one of the many insane, and incredibly funny, lines that punctuate the romance of the film. The humour of Moonstruck is as beautifully composed as the Puccini opera that soundtracks it: every moment is precisely timed and delivered.

Underneath the humour and passion of Moonstruck is an unwavering committment to love and romance. Even the resolution of infidelity in the marriage of Loretta’s parents: a confrontation quietly issued over family breakfast, that ends with a gently uttered “anche io ti amo”, is burning with a quiet optimism in the triumph of love.

Though critically acclaimed at the time of its release, Moonstruck has since faded from public adoration. I think it’s high time we dust off our old VCRs and give it the praise it truly deserves.